May 2,  2001

BARENBRUG HOLDING BV of the Netherlands and BOREAL PLANT BREEDING LTD of Finland have entered into an agreement regarding breeding and marketing of forage grasses and red clover. The co-operation will lead to a better market position in the Nordic climate areas, such as Scandinavia, Poland, Northern Russia, Canada, Northern USA and parts of China and Japan.

This co-operation with Boreal Plant Breeding Ltd forms part of the ongoing Barenbrug strategy to develop and market a specialised product portfolio of grass varieties, catering for different climatic areas around the world. The joint breeding activity in the Nordic areas provides unique varieties, which are complementary to the varieties from the Barenbrug research program. Barenbrug will enjoy the worldwide exclusive rights for production and marketing, outside of Finland, for all jointly developed varieties.

Boreal Plant Breeding Ltd is a Finnish company, incorporating the former state breeding institutes and plantbreeding activities of the company Hankkija. With modern facilities and the application of new techniques such as anther culture and molecular markers, they focus on variety breeding for the Nordic climate areas. The co-operation with Barenbrug enables the expansion of their breeding activities.

The Barenbrug Group is an international Dutch based operating company, active in plant breeding, seed production and worldwide marketing. They, probably more so than any other seed company in the world, specialise in grasses. With subsidiaries on five continents they produce a total of 85,000 metric tons of seeds. This makes Barenbrug the world’s leader in this area.

Both the Barenbrug Group and Boreal Plant Breeding Ltd will take advantage of the synergy between the development of unique genetic material for the Nordic climate areas and the Barenbrug worldwide production and marketing organisation.

Company news release
N3502